What if everyone was right?

What if Christianity was right? What if Islam holds the truth? And Buddhism? And Hinduism and the Native Americans and the Inca and Scientology and atheism? What if Science also got it right? All at the same time.

Perhaps all viewpoints are correct. Perhaps they represent their own unique view of truth.

Of course it would be hard to fully reconcile two diametrical different viewpoints of “God exists” and “God does not exist”. Or perhaps not.

While each ideology or world view tend to hold their own as the Only Truth, it would be interesting to see if a more universal view could be uncovered by treating each view as looking at truth from but one angle.

Back in 1991 I was interviewed by a student of the Theological Faculty of the University of Oslo. He was doing his master thesis on “Reincarnation in Christianity”. While he didn’t believe in reincarnation himself, he was fascinated with the 19 references left in the Bible after diligent purges were conducted early on in the book’s history. He knew I believed in reincarnation and wanted my views and my past life stories. This example goes to show that seemingly opposing views could be reconciled.

A crude attempt at unification of world views could go like this: The universe is created. Continually. There are causes and there are effects. A higher cause may be called God. Different versions of this cause can go by different names. There are lesser causes and some animate bodies and bring them to life. In doing so, the causes form identities. These identities die when the body dies and what you consider you is no longer. But keeping with the conservation of information (related to “unitarity” in quantum mechanics), the information you carry is never lost. The core of you, the cause, the soul, passes on “to the other side” or a “higher understanding” where this cause can decide to once again forge an identity and participate in experience. There may be several or even infinite levels of such “higher understandings” forming a fractal universe. The movie trilogy, “Matrix” may serve as an artist’s representation of this. Identities from higher causes may be seen as Gods, angels or the like. But none are omnipotent, only potentially so – as taking on an identity exchanges potential for actuality and experience. In keeping with Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems, the physical universe is not complete – it is not all there is. There is always more truth to be uncovered, more realms to understand. The journey never ends and the journey is the destination.

This crude example would make the core of Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, all ancient mythologies, new age, angels, spirits and the physical sciences into aspects of truth. Their sum could be even closer to truth. A more complete truth may evolve as more aspects of world views are unified.

Instead of starting with “that viewpoint must be wrong”, perhaps truth is better uncovered by “how can that viewpoint be right”?

The nuance here is how true, that is, the amount of truth everyone has (conceding that not everything everyone says is true; e. g.: the Universe was created in six literal days, humans and apes are not related, the Sun rotates around the Earth, the Earth is flat, etc.).

It depends on what is meant by six days, what related means (perhaps apes and humans are not spiritually related), sun revolving around the Earth is not necessarily untrue (“Although it is not uncommon for people to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true [Hawking & Mlodinow]). Etc.
When we go from “that must surely be Wrong” to “Hmm… how could that be true somehow”, whole new vistas open up.

I understand your point and I totally agree, but let’s not forget that there are people out there who believe literally in those assertions (the world was created in six literal, 24-hour days and so on). They don’t see them as symbolizations or relativizations of deeper truths as you and I could. And sometimes that literal understanding is foundational to their beliefs.This doesn’t mean, of course, that there is no truth in their specific religions, philosophies, dogmas, doctrines, etc. So, the question still is how true are those religions or ideologies, or in which way or sense are they true. That’s pretty much my point.

So, in some points of view you, Geir, are the Ultimate Being of all. And in another view, you are the little bitch of the Universe. And in a LOT of views you are a guy in the middle.

So, here’s one of a gazillion such views that are all true in as you describe. What if you are EVERY POSSIBLE LIFE AND VIEW?

That life you look down on disgust? Yeah. You’re that.

That perfect “you?” Yup.

The notion that you don’t exist at ALL AND THERE IS NO SOUL? Check.

The pedophile down the street? Yikes! Sorry!

L. Ron Hubbard? By Xemu!

Materialism is the ultimate reality? Boring, but Sure!

Flying Spaghetti Monster? Let’s eat God!

So, in such a worst case scenario as you describe above, I would say enlightenment is the ability to handle anything that can be true on its own terms with the integrity that comes from the sanctity of one’s being.

The Stoic version of such an enlightenment would be to face any such life as an “Indifferent” and love only the joys one can create in one’s own mind and from what one can control.

In both enlightenments, this includes even the destruction of the ability to create one’s integrity from the sanctity of one’s being. Yeah, one can actually own even that.

How does one handle NOT being able to handle something?

Maybe when one is a cowering mass of little bitch because of someone else’s “truth” being used against you during torture, some part of one can say, “So what?” Some part can STILL separate and be indifferent to it even if it was only done in rehearsal beforehand or after the fact.

Then one can look at ANY life as ones lived life and smile a smile of contempt and say.

“Really life? Is that all you got? Since I choose to think it’s possible that I lived every life, I choose to think I’ve had a lot worse. This doesn’t impress me.”

What the Gods fear are not the Satans, but the Prometheuses of the world. But human’s aren’t titans. We can’t bounce back from torture like Prometheus.

KG, your enthusiasm for Stoicism Is enjoyable to observe. It reminds me of the way many of us felt when we discovered and got involved in Scientology. I am sure the experience was just as beneficial for many people as Stoicism is for others. Anyway, I’m happy for you! 🙂

You could have titled your blog post “My Spiritual Theory of Everything”. 🙂

It seems you’re of the same mind as Ken Wilbur and others before him who had an “integral” worldview – which sees individuals and cultures as dividing up into three basic categories that evolve from egocentric (“me, myself and I”) to ethnocentric (“us vs. them” – i.e. my group, such as nationalism or a particular religion) and finally to world-centric (“all of us” – a global point of view).

A person or a culture with the world-centric view is the most developed – whether psychologically, emotionally, intellectually, or other “intelligences”. However, per my understanding, in Integral Theory all worldviews have value at times. So, from that perspective, and my own, I would say your insight is pretty good.

Just don’t forget that even organized Scientology (like in the earlier years, not what it became under Miscavige) was just the right path for individuals and groups who are still at the ethnocentric stage. You wouldn’t expect an eight-year-old to think and act like a twelve-year old – they have to grow up to the next “level”.

Nice to see this, Geir. Coming on the heels of your recent sailing, trekking, and scaling of a mountain. This posting seems to state a preparedness to condense into a more holistic world view. A shift, or a willingness to continue the explorations?

Nothing quite beats the thrill of uncovering new vistas. This is the activity of the (human) soul in essence.

“Philosophy” happens to be a word summing up man’s attempts to actualize a “belief”
that all life must be caused, therefore he “philosophizes!”

Spiritual, or soul – oriented we become, when we can center our awareness, by merely being there, with NOTHING added, thoughts or otherwise.

Histories, ancestral or even anecdotal, just seem to feed a sense of belonging, that we cling to, in order to gain assurances of our own relevance or importance, convinced that it is all part of what we “are.”

Perhaps the biblical passage in the Bible, comes closest to revealing an ultimate truth: by proclaiming that: “God created man in HIS own image”

Surely, therefore, “omnipotence” may be the ultimate quest of our collective human purpose.

Yet, do we not already possess this potential, in our primary beingness?

Is not being “right”, merely a fettering consideration, added to simply BE-ing? 🙂

RACING: “Philosophy” happens to be a word summing up man’s attempts to actualize a “belief”
that all life must be caused, therefore he “philosophizes!”

I think a better word for your statement here is “religion” Racing.

WHAT SOME PHILOSOPHERS SAY ABOUT PHILOSOPHY:

SENECA: “We philosophers are physicians of the soul.”

EPICTETUS: “Philosophy does not promise to secure anything external* for humans, otherwise, it would be admitting something that lies beyond the proper subject matter. For just as wood is the material of the carpenter, bronze that of the statuary, so each individual’s own life is the material of the art of living.”

(*) Something beyond our personal control

CHRYSIPPUS: “Assuredly, there is an art to healing the soul – I mean philosophy, whose aid must be sought not, as in bodily diseases, outside ourselves, and we must use our utmost endeavor with all our resources and strength, to have the power to be ourselves our own physicians.”

***

RELIGION: Something else will heal you that is outside and superior to yourself.
PHILOSOPHY: You alone can truly heal yourself with logic, physics and ethics.

It’s impossible everything to be meaningless. And this is not about religion only. What about science? What about mathematics, chemistry, what about astronomy? We cannot live in an ocean of meaningless. Everything has a meaning, maybe all of us understand and see it different, that’s all.

To me much religion and philosophy and cosmotheory seem like partially true, but also contain parts that push them towards an opposite direction. They wind up contradicting themselves, being illogical. It’s as if somebody started it with some intention, then another infused them with an opposing intention.

For example, I used to be very negative towards Christianity in general (a bit fanatic about it) as I thought it had been forced on me. But after many years of not being involved with it, I view some parts of it completely differently than I used to, and probably differently than others view it too (Christians included). I feel I can agree so much with some parts of it –but only some parts.

The ‘it’s all a matter of viewpoint’ assertation, which I have adopted too somehow too, seems partially true to me too. Still there can be some ramifications that could make it negative. Like if two people agree that backstabbing is wrong, and then one backstabs the other, and then he tells him ‘well, it’s only backstabbing because you view it like that’, it kinda sucks, I think. It shouldn’t be used as excuse to ignore agreed upon things.

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